Ilicet

There is an end of joy and sorrow; Peace all day long, all night, all morrow, But never a time to laugh or weep. The end is come of pleasant places, The end of tender words and faces, The end of all, the poppied sleep. No place for sound within their hearing, No room to hope, no time for fearing, No lips to laugh, no lids for tears. The old years have run out all their measure; No chance of pain, no chance of pleasure, No fragment of the broken years. Outside of all the worlds and ages, There where the fool is as the sage is, There where the slayer is clean of blood, No end, no passage, no beginning, There where the sinner leaves off sinning, There where the good man is not good. There is not one thing with another, But Evil saith to Good: My brother, My brother, I am one with thee: They shall not strive nor cry forever: No man shall choose between them: never Shall this thing end and that thing be. Wind wherein seas and stars are shaken Shall shake them, and they shall not waken; None that has lain down shall arise; The stones are sealed across their places; One shadow is shed on all their faces, One blindness cast on all their eyes. Sleep, it is sleep perchance that covers Each face, as each face were his lover's? Farewell: as men that sleep fare well. The grave's mouth laughs unto derision Desire and dread and dream and vision, Delight of heaven and sorrow of hell. No soul shall tell nor lip shall number The names and tribes of you that slumber; No memory, no memorial. "Thou knowest" -- who shall say thou knowest? There is none highest and none lowest; An end, an end, an end of all. Good night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow, To those that shall not have good morrow; The gods be gentle to all these. Nay, if death be not, how shall they be? Nay, if there is help in heaven? it may be All things and lords of things shall cease. The stooped urn, filling, dips and flashes; The bronzed brims are deep in ashes; The pale old lips of death are fed. Shall this dust gather flesh hereafter? Shall one shed tears or fall to laughter, At sight of all these poor old dead? Nay, as thou wilt; these know not of it; Thine eyes' strong weeping shall not profit, Thy laughter shall not give thee ease; Cry aloud, spare not, cease not crying, Sigh, till thou cleave thy sides with sighing, Thou shalt not raise up one of these. Burnt spices flash, and burnt wine hisses, The breathing flame's mouth curls and kisses The small dried rows of frankincense; All round the sad red blossoms smoulder, Flowers colored like the fire, but coulder, In sign of sweet things taken hence; Yea, for their sake and in death's favor Things of sweet shape and of sweet savor We yield them, spice and flower and wine; Yea, costlier things than wine or spices, Whereof none knoweth how great the price is, And fruit taht comes not of the vine. From boy's pierced throat and girl's pierced bosom Drips, reddening ruond the blood-red blossoms, The slow delicious bright soft blood, Bathing the spices and the pyre, Bathing the flowers and fallen fire, Bathing the blossom by the bud. Roses whose lips the flame had deadened Drink till the lapping leaves are reddened And warm wet inner petals weep; The flower whereof sick sleep gets leisure, Barren of balm and purple pleasure, Fumes with no native steam of sleep. Why will ye weep? what do ye weeping? For waking folk and people sleeping, And sands that fill and sands that fall, The days rose-red, the poppied hours, Blood, wine, and spice and fire and flowers, There is one end of one and all. Shall such an one lend love or borrow? Shall these be sorry for thy sorrow? Shall these give thanks for words or breath? Their hate is as their loving-kindness; The frontlet of their brows is blindness, The armlet of their arms is death. Lo, for no noise or light of thunder Shall these grave-clothes be rent in sunder, He that hath taken, shall he give? he hath rent them: shall be bind together? He hath bound them: shall he break the tether? He hath slain them: shall he bid them live? A little sorrow, a little pleasure, Fate metes us from the dusty measure That holds the date of all of us; We are born with travail and strong crying, And from the birth-day to the dying The likeness of our life is thus. One girds himself to serve another, Whose father was the dust, whose mother The little dead red worm therein; They find no fruit of things they cherish; The goodness of a man shall perish, It shall be one thing with his sin. In deep wet ways by gray old gardens, Fed with sharp spring the sweet fruit hardens; They know not what fruits wane or grow; Red summer burns to the utmost ember; They know not, neither can remember, The old years and flowers they used to know. Ah, for their sakes, so trapped and taken, For theirs, forgotten and forsaken, Watch, sleep not, gird thyself with prayer. Nay, where the heart of wrath is broken, Where long love ends as a thing spoken, How shall thy crying enter there? Though the iron sides of the old world falter The likeness of them shall not alter For all the rumor of periods, The stars and seasons that come after The tears of latter men, the laughter Of the unalterable gods. Far above the years and nations, The high gods, clothed and crowned with patience Endure through days of death-like date; They bear the witness of things hidden; Before their eyes all life stands chidden, As they before the eyes of Fate. Not for their love shall Fate retire, Nor they relent for our desire, Nor the graves open for their call. The end is more than joy and anguish, The lives that laugh and lives that languish, The poppied sleep, the end of all.